6/27/2006 @ 6:00AM

A Half-Century Legacy

It was half a century ago–June 29, 1956–when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Federal Highway Aid Act that made possible the Interstate Highway System. The aim was to pull together a country that was, at that time, well-connected by rail but badly disconnected by a hodgepodge of roads, streets and dirt paths.

This act came as the Cold War was in full flower. John Foster Dulles and the Russians had everyone on the edge of their chairs, or the front seats of their Star Chief four-door Catalinas. Car radios were belting out Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” and his gyrations divided America along deepening generational lines. Drive-in movies featured Yul Brynner in The King and I.

It was a time when the first highway Holiday Inns (launched in 1952) already were being spotted across the landscape. The orange-roofed Howard Johnsons, initiated in 1925, were becoming a part of the great American way of road life. People motored for pleasure (no seat belts, air bags, head rests) and, to a great extent, locally.

This was to change rapidly.

Trucks moved locally and, at best, regionally. This would change as well. Passenger air traffic, dominated by the likes of TWA and Pan Am, was limited in scope, range and terminals. It took almost as long to get to the airport as it did to fly. At least that much hasn’t changed much.

In 1952, Eisenhower said, “The obsolescence of the nation’s highways presents an appalling problem of waste, danger and death.” He added that a modern road network is “as necessary to defense as it is to our national economy and personal safety.” Those are cogent words worth repeating today in relation to a legacy system of some 42,000 miles of first-class roads, now badly jammed and rarely fully maintained.

The Interstate Highway System that Eisenhower inaugurated carries 24% of the nation’s traffic, yet it makes up only 1% of the more than 4 million miles of U.S. roads.

In 1956, there were three prototypes for a very large-scale highway design already in place. The first, a working roadway, was the German Autobahn–as much Adolf Hitler’s pride as the Volkswagen. The Autobahn’s first section opened in 1935. Today, it is about half the length of the U.S. system but appears in better condition. The Germans created their roads with deeper underlayers, and until the last decade, they did not have the same intensity of traffic as the U.S. system.

The second prototype was the first major highway of a modern cast built in the U.S. It was, and is, the Pennsylvania Turnpike–considered the grandfather of the Eisenhower system. It was commissioned in 1937 and opened on Oct. 27, 1938. At 160 miles, it set a number of precedents. It had no road crossings, no railroad crossings and no traffic lights. It made its way through mountainous terrain by the use of seven major tunnels. The pathway for the Pennsylvania Turnpike was first forged as the right-of-way for a railroad that had been long abandoned. All of these benefits the turnpike enjoyed were later shared by the Interstate system.

The third prototype was displayed in the 1939 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, where it was the hit exhibit, boasting the longest lines. The then all-powerful
General Motors
developed it. “Futurama” demonstrated an extensive highway system in detail with model cars moving through bridges, tunnels, cities and clover leafs.

Designed by Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), the exhibit included a model version of an automated guideway consisting of three lanes that had speed limits of 50, 75 and 100 miles per hour. Bel Geddes was a famous industrial designer who was described as having his head in the clouds. Despite this description, the Interstate Highway System ended up looking very much like his model–only larger. Since he died just two years after Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Aid Act, he missed the whole thing.

For Eisenhower, however, the prototype that impressed him most was Germany’s Autobahn. As Supreme Allied Commander, Eisenhower had seen first hand just how well-designed and efficient the German highway system had become by the end of World War II. He saw clearly that the old two-lane roads that snaked through much of America were simply inadequate to support the explosive post-war growth the nation was experiencing.

The Interstate project had started in rudimentary form under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The creation of a national system of roads was placed in the hands of the Bureau of Public Roads–an organization of determined longevity but limited imagination. As funds became available, the system came slowly together, providing safer travel with median dividers between the major lanes and well-banked exits. The curves were gentler than drivers were used to, and the great joy was a combination of no intersections and of going around cities rather than through them.

All these changes accelerated dramatically under Eisenhower, rapidly transforming the American landscape. The project made people aware of the potential of the entire nation. Its most radical impact was on commerce, logistics and the yet-to-be-understood national supply-chain needs and opportunities.

The Interstate system was slated to cost less than $13 billion, but it is estimated to have cost $114 billion. Of this cost the federal government picked up 90%. Today, the cost of replication is almost beyond imagining.

The standards by which the roads and its infrastructure were developed came out of state highway agencies. These were, in time, turned over to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and implemented by the Federal Highway Administration (inheritor of the mantle of the Bureau of Public Roads). The FHA knows now that its need billions just to maintain the status quo.

Today, this once-grand system of highways is overtaxed, under-repaired and fails to meet the great needs of connecting U.S. ports, industries and railway and air hubs. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives this once-proud system a “D” rating.

Does the nation have the will to take on the task of rebuilding and building, and its cost? Is there an Eisenhower out there to inspire the nation to this duty?

Dan McNichol, author of the book The Roads That BuiltAmerica, says the system, now half a century old, is going through its “midlife crisis.”

Eisenhower should have the last word: “Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear– United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.” It was his highway system that has tied them all together.